Sexuality and Same-Sex Sex: A Matter of Morality or Anthropology—Theological Anthropology, Human Sciences, and Doctrinal Development in Church of England Debates

Contemporary ecclesial debates about same-sex relationships have become methodologically disordered not simply because churches reach different moral conclusions, but because they repeatedly attempt to answer a moral question without first doing the anthropological work such a question requires. This article argues that Christian sexual ethics cannot be responsibly pursued without a theological anthropology that is empirically informed, historically alert, and responsive to the complexity of creaturely life. Arguments from Scripture, natural law, and tradition all carry anthropological assumptions that must be examined, not merely assumed. The Church of England’s Living in Love and Faith process serves as a case study in the difficulty of allowing interdisciplinary inquiry—psychological, historical, sociological, and literary—to reshape doctrinal reasoning rather than merely inform pastoral sensitivity. Until the church engages seriously with theological anthropology, its sexual ethics will remain both intellectually precarious and pastorally inadequate.